An eye-opening article in today's Washington Post says that internal White House documents indicate that meeting the president's goal of cutting the deficit in half will involve a significant amount of cutting to domestic programs -- even to those supposedly "favored" by President Bush.

Recently there have been some interesting op-eds on budget business in the Washington Post. Former CBO head Douglas Holtz-Eakin submitted an op-ed February 5 in which he discussed how increasingly booming entitlement programs need a "fundamental rethinking" that will dictate both the size of government as well as levels of taxation. E.J. Dionne, Jr. discusses in a February 7 column how "tax cutting is now the idol of the Republican shrine," and points out that sane budgeting will never happen unless deficit hawks work to turn popular opinion against this worship of tax cutting.

Be sure to check out the latest issue of our biweekly newsletter, The Watcher. Reg policy articles this time: Foxes in the Henhouse: OSHA, MSHA Nominees Appear Pro-Industry, Anti-Worker

Initial Analysis of the President's 2007 Budget CBO Again Finds Fiscal Policies Unsustainable Congress to Have Short Year; Appropriations Work Likely to Suffer Final Budget Bill Passed; Tax Bill Sent to Conference